Many businesses present bills to and/or accept payment from clients. Traditionally, businesses have sent invoices through the postal mail as well as received payment for such invoices via postal mail in the form of a check. Recently, financial institutions and electronic financial transaction companies have offered businesses the ability to electronically present bills and accept payments. The presentment and payment can be done over the Internet via a web interface or email. Other scenarios may include accepting payment through an interactive voice response (IVR) system. Further, bill presentment and payment may be performed through mobile devices via a wireless application or text messaging.
However, such electronic bill presentment and payment mechanisms offered by financial institutions and financial transaction companies are not tailored to a specific business. Moreover, a business is usually provided a bill presentment and payment capability that has no customization in both implementing the business's aesthetic online appearance or branding as well as executing custom business logic scripts to conform to the business's customary business practices. A business may be able develop its own electronic bill presentment and payment system. However, such an effort would not be cost-effective or take the advantage of the economies of scale of financial institutions and financial transaction companies implementing electronic bill presentment and payment systems for a plurality of businesses. In addition, a business may have the need to update or customize aspects of its bill presentment and payment system dynamically and in real-time (i.e. runtime). Electronic bill presentment and payment systems offered by financial institutions and financial transaction companies do not provide such dynamic customization.
Accordingly, there is a need for dynamically customizing bill presentment and EBPP workflows.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.
The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.